The New York subway, which has more stations than any underground railway in the world, is notorious for crowds, delays, dirt and rats. But it can also be a place of the sublime.
For three-quarters of a century the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York, one of America’s most important colleges for art and design, has been producing posters to catch the eye and lift the mood of commuters bustling through subterranean stations. It is the longest-running advertising campaign in the history of the city’s Metropolitan Transit Authority.
Now more than 200 posters from this collection will be displayed above ground at the SVA Chelsea Gallery in an exhibition, Underground Images: A History, along with multimedia installations, progress sketches and paintings and a recreated subway platform. The show features works by 93 artists including Milton Glaser, Paula Scher, Marshall Arisman and Gail Anderson.
“I’m hoping that the people who see this will make the connection, which the posters were originally conceived to make,” said Francis Di Tommaso, director of SVA Galleries. “Here’s visual arts. It’s grabbing you by the lapels. It’s got your eyeballs. That’s what we do here. This is our product. We make artists. I’m hoping that that connection will be furthered by seeing the whole 208 of these things, the whole collection of them.”
Silas Rhodes and Burne Hogarth, who was best known for drawing the Tarzan comic strip, founded the SVA in 1947. Then called the Cartoonists and Illustrators School, it was primarily aimed at returning second world war veterans, most of whom took courses at night to compete for better jobs in advertising and publishing.
Di Tommaso recalls talking to the chairman of the college at that time, who was inspired by seeing affiches (posters) in Paris. “He saw posters in the Métro and said ‘Wow, this is cool!’ – or something that a world war two veteran would say.”
The SVA soon began commissioning the posters from faculty members as creative marketing then took them to the walls lining subway platforms. Hogarth designed one of the first. Soon the school was producing two or three a year under Rhodes’s leadership.
Di Tommaso comments: “What Silas did was to imitate or to follow the example of the French affiche by having a beautiful, appealing, eye-catching quality. He would commission the faculty of designers, illustrators, artists, whatnot to do these posters. He came up with these beautiful, gorgeous posters with very witty or keen taglines or slogans like, ‘To be good is not enough when you dream of being great’ or ‘Talent isn’t worth much unless you know what to do with it’.
“Then for the 50th anniversary it was quite simply, ‘Art is’. He called on about a dozen artists and designers to interpret it: for you, what is it? For example, one notable design was by Paula Scher. Her concept was ‘art is’ – the words in lower case – and then you look closely and there’s a kajillion names in there of artists including musicians, designers, painters, whatever. The words are made up of these people’s names. A very witty concept for what art is.”
The extraordinary run has included a 50-year collaboration with Glaser, master designer of the celebrated “I ♥ NY” logo. After the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, he responded with “I ♥ NY more than ever”, in which the heart has a small burn mark on the lower left, representing the location of the World Trade Centre in Manhattan. The poster was distributed all over New York by students from the SVA.
Another 9/11 response, designed by Kevin O’Callaghan, shows a window in Brooklyn looking out across the river to the Manhattan skyline where the twin towers used to be. In their place are two living topiaries in the same shape under the tagline: “Art is … healing.”
Di Tommaso is surprised that other major art schools in America have not copied the idea. “Something that struck me is nobody has ever imitated SVA. Nobody has tapped into the talent, their faculty, some alumni, to come up with these eye-catching posters that you want to look at just because they’re so cool and beautiful and they grab your attention. It seems a pretty smart way to attract attention to the colleges. All of them say School of Visual Arts in one way or the other.”
The most recent poster, set to debut this autumn, pays homage to the 50th anniversary of hip-hop with a photograph by the alumnus and faculty member Angel R Ibañez, who has taken portraits of artists such as Run DMC and James Brown.
Since 2006 a travelling version of Underground Images has toured galleries around the world including in the Czech Republic, India, Jamaica, Ireland, Turkey, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Italy, Serbia and many other countries and US cities.
Now it is coming home in expanded form. Four sections of the gallery will cover the history of the posters and the methods behind their creation as well as their evolution and cultural impact. The exhibition shows how the posters involve crafts such as typography, illustration, graphic design and fine art.
What does Di Tommaso hope people will take away from it? “That when they’re in the subway, as we all are, they’ll make a connection between the artistry of these and the college. It’s a very strong reflection of the college that generates these things and gives an opportunity not just in terms of the commission but then printing 830 of them per run. That’s a lot.”
Underground Images: A History is on display at the SVA Chelsea Gallery in New York from 29 August until 14 October
